July, 2012. Ocean Grove, NJ. This is one way to be heard, but nobody left their signatures, and a petition can get many more voices to express an opinion. Blogfinger photo © by Mary Walton.
The Neptune Township Committee has the power to effect your lives. They can order you around because they can write ordinances and rules that will influence your quality of life, home values, historic preservation in Ocean Grove, and the look and feel of our town. They can tax you and tell you where to park. They can allow developers to construct big ugly buildings designed to make money and to increase density in OG.
Neptune Township receives its power from the people. Power flows downhill from the People’s Congress in Washington to the Neptune Mother Ship. So we need to tell our representatives that they can lose their power if they don’t pay attention to the wishes of the people.
At any Township meeting, with some exceptions, only a handful of citizens get to express their opinions, and then only for five minutes. This is hardly a good way for the voice of the people to be heard.
On Blogfinger we do polls and we hope that the Committee takes an interest in the results. They are supposed to be representing us, so you would think that they would like to know what the shifting winds of public opinion are saying about issues that concern us in Ocean Grove. We often get over 200 poll participants, and many more like to look at the polls. Many of the poll posts are shared on social networking sites or simply by sending BF links to friends and neighbors. But more voices need to be heard by the tone-deaf members of the Neptune Governing Body.
However, we get the impression that our representatives don’t care what we think. Perhaps they would care more if they heard from many hundreds or even thousands of Ocean Grove citizens/voters.
Blogfinger is basically a local news site. We offer opinions in our editorials, but we are not activists—we won’t organize a rally or a march on the Neptune Mother Ship.
We will announce an important meeting such as when the Committee might rule on the North End Redevelopment Plan, but we won’t get up and debate the issues at the HOA. That sort of thing is for community activists, who are in short supply in this town.
Recently a reader offered to make fliers to send electronically when it is necessary to rally attendance at a Town meeting. That’s great, because we will announce the meeting, but not make fliers.
Another reader suggested that someone do online petitions. That is a way to gather many hundreds of signatures to promote a particular point of view. Such petitions are used all over the world to influence local governments.
“Since 2007, the online petition platform Change.org has had more than 224 million online signatures in 196 countries to support and drive change in national, state, and local government legislation and corporate policies. (hubspot.com)”
But we will not initiate petitions, sign petitions or seek out signatures. Journalists don’t do that. We will publicize the efforts of others who would work on petitions—that’s news.
Petitions are a great idea to hit the Neptune Twp. Committee with a lot of voices on specific issues. If any of you want to actually do something, consider creating an online petition (eg via Change.org). Let me know, and I will publicize your project.
Here’s a sample idea for a petition ; “We the undersigned demand that Neptune Township cancel the North End Redevelopment Plan and return the project to private enterprise and original single family zoning.”
FRANKIE RANDALL